Royce went down the mountain flushed with victory. He had descried a strong and favorable revolution in popular sentiment toward him, and the duty nearest at hand was to make the illusion true and lay siege to the heart of Euphemia. He was not concerned as to how his wooing should speed. It was only essential that it should be a demonstration sufficiently marked to justify his lingering presence here and sustain the impression which he had made on the lime-burners. He said this again and again to himself, to appease a certain repugnance which he began to experience when the idea with which he had lightly played became a definite and constraining course of action. He remembered that in reverie he had even gone so far as to canvass the disguise which marriage might afford, settling him here permanently as if he were a native, and, as time should pass, lessening daily the chance of the detection of his identity and of his life heretofore. He realized that for the next twenty years this discovery would be impending at any moment. He had a great respect for the truth as truth, and its inherent capacity for prevailing; and this led him to fear it the more. A lie has so fatal a proclivity to collapse. He had often told himself that it was the part of policy to accept life here as one of the mountaineers, content with their portion of the good things vouchsafed, the brand of undeserved shame evaded, the hardship of ignominious imprisonment eluded, the struggle of poverty reduced to its minimum in this Arcadian existence; for sometimes he realized anew, with a half-dazed sense, that the old life was indeed gone forever,--if for naught else, by reason of his financial losses in the collapse of the firm of Greenhalge, Gould & Fife. He now stipulated within himself, however, that this was to be only a feint of love-making,--a flirtation, he would have termed it, were it to be illumined by wax candles, or the electric light, or gas, in lieu of the guttering tallow dip. He adduced with a sense of protection--and he could not forbear a laugh at himself and his sudden terrors--the certainty with which he had cause to know that the heart of the fair daughter of the miller was already bestowed on the young “crank,” as he called the man “who was fool enough to pray for what he wanted.” Yet for all it was to be only a mere semblance of capture, he could but be dubious of these chains with which he was about to invest himself of deliberate intention; heretofore he had fallen headlong in love and headlong out, and would not have shackled himself of his own volition. Thus he rattled Cupid’s fetters tentatively, timorously, judging of their weight, and with a wish to be safely out of them as well as swiftly into them. It was but a feint, he reassured himself. On her part, she would have an additional conquest to boast of; and as to him, all the world--of Etowah Cove--would see with what grace he would “wear the willow-tree.”